Well, I found one solution to the issue I had where SAC/SAW wouldn't populate the audio devices list without some amount of screwing around, reopening the program, even unplugging and replugging the UFX usb cable...

I've temporarily disabled the 2 Hammerfall pci cards in Device Manager that I had been using with the Digiface interfaces (to get 48 analog mic channels). I was even able to reboot the pc without having to replug the usb cable.

I wasn't trying to use both the pci and usb devices at the same time - simply wanting to keep both available, should I need to switch back to the pci routing. I can certainly do that, should the need arise. But for now it solves the problems I was having.

When I get the time, it would still be nice to find out if I can make use of both simultaneously.

Ah.... the Guest of JMH....... sounds like a story I read once.

Guest? That was me. The page timed out and I entered the challenge characters and it posted that way.

I forgot to mention the first level of remedy, was to allow the mixer to completely boot before starting the pc - I wound up finding a delay setting in bios so I could just flip the switch that powered both and the PC paused long enough for the mixer to be ready. Since your rme drivers are behaving better than the presonus' (as the unplug and replug the usb cable didn't work on that), you might find that just controlling the boot sequence does the trick

Part of the usb initialization is the ability to pass a firmware payload to the remote device (which of course it can't accept if it is not powered up. I had some telco devices where I learned about this the hard way). I don't know about RME's driver implementation does this, so regard this as speculation. In any case it seems reasonable that there is handshaking between the device and the drivers are being loaded - and certainly some when the PNP is discovering hardware.

Windows 11 claims to be Pro Audio???
Wow! I would never have figured, given the troubles I had just cleaning it up for use in the studio for the two brief months I tried to convince myself to change from Windows 10.

Anyway, I'm on Windows 10 (pro).

I'm no expert at any of this, but I think there is a fundamental difference between the way Presonus works with Windows audio and what RME does, even though they're both USB devices. I think I know what you're talking about with the Presonus, WDM drivers, etc., as I also work with Presonus USB interfaces now and then (not on this pc). Points noted.. thanks.

I see what you're saying, too, about how the usb is plug-and play so the OS re-enumerates them when it boots...
I didn't know about this until very recently, when reading up about this issue I'm having with the UFX3.
It's puzzling to me, in that respect, that this should be the cause, since the UFX3 is the only device I have on the USB3 port.
That is, unless Windows does this hokey-pokey shuffling around of usb devices as one big system, regardless of usb2 or 3.

Today will be the first time in a week that I'm actually rebooting and then continuing testing. So I will hopefully be able to explore the main issue I was concerned about, when starting up SAC and the messed up audio device settings. It may be the case that I have to set the UFX3 MADI I/O assignments and save it as default (as opposed to just saving to file and calling it up after starting SAC) in order for SAC to properly populate the I/O after rebooting the pc. We'll see today.

As for the usb.... I can adjust to booting and then repluging the UFX3 usb cable, if that's what it takes. As long as I don't lose the connection mid-recording, I'm okay with it - So far, this hasn't happened and I think it's thanks to the ever-reliable performance of RME designs - at least in my experience.

Are you on 11?

I have had similar problems with presonus series III of having to boot in specific order or the audio is hosed up and everything must be restarted rather than a cable re-insertion.

One of the things I did was disabling windows audio service. Windows loads a wdm wrapper around the asio drivers for the first few channels, and applies its sample-rate... which may not coincide with the setting you use in studio.
In the presonus case, there were 2 groups of drivers listed in system device-drivers. I wound up disabling the wdm drivers* and the locked audio issue is greatly alleviated.

Also the usb is plug-and play so the OS re-enumerates them when it boots.

BTW I also have used behringer mixers and found they worked pretty reliably (but this may have been on win10 - which didn't seem to pretend to be pro-audio as much as 11 does).

I explored this extensively - but that was about a year ago, so the details are a bit fuzzy.

*Not really a problem for me - but could be for others, the midi driver for the presonus was bundled with the wdm drivers - I think under game devices. I haven't taken the time to see if that one portion can be run - but I have the sense that was managed by windows audio.

Hey! It's so good to have the forums back up and running - Looks Great. Thanks Bob and Jeanne!

So, this is the first time I've used an RME UFX III (USB3) Interface. It is generally working fine so far in my testing.
But, I'm really struggling to maintain SAC Audio Device Settings when I boot the pc and start up SAC.

Most times, even though I've saved and called up the correct Preference File (I haven't saved this as default yet, because I'm in a transition between the older RME pci card setup and this USB scheme), I usually first get the "unrecognized" ASIO Protocol thing and have to check the UFX as the correct device. That will often fix things, but cause me to have to recall the Preference File again in order to populate the I/O in the "correct" order for my purposes. Today, however, after going through those steps, the Audio Devices list showed just blank entries where I'd normally see each I/O listed, until the place in the list where "Not Assigned" showed. I had to close SAC and restart it, going through the same steps again in order to see the list populated properly.

I haven't been able to do extensive testing yet (until I can actually connect to a mixer with MADI on it, so I can test multitrack recording to SAW). But I fully expect that the UFX and SAC will work fine together. I'm a bit concerned about this situation with getting this USB interface to work at the setup stage with SAC. The only other USB experience I've had up to this point is with the Behringer x32 console and that's been a breeze, but it was/is on a laptop, with no way to actively monitor and mix - instead, just using SAC as a front end to record in SAW.

Does anybody have any suggestions, or insights about this strangeness?

I've also been a bit flustered at the need to physically unplug and re-plug the USB cable to get SAC/SAW (or anything else) to recognize the MADI I/O when I first boot up the pc. It is evidently "a thing", based on some online searching I've done. I don't get it.